Danger Will Robinson!

On my way home, today, Kim called me in a panic. An alarm was going off in the house and it appeared to be one of the carbon monoxide detectors. I was still a few minutes away, unable to help. However, I recalled replacing those detectors a few years ago, so surely they’re not malfunctioning already. My heart sunk. I know I’ve been living on borrowed time with the furnace, waiting to replace it and now I’ve waited too long, endangering our lives. My instructions to her were clear. Evacuate the house. Call 9-1-1.

I rushed home, swearing at the slower cars in front of me. Kim called me back. She was safely out with the dog, but it was getting hard to breathe inside and the cats were still in there. Peeking at our home camera system, I could see Quinn meowing at the garage door. I texted Kim back – she’s at the door. Just open it up, scoop her up, and get back out. But that still leaves one more cat!

The house came into view. No fire trucks. No police. Fuck, where are they?! They literally just have to come from across the street! I raced up the driveway and decided to take a chance – I ran in and turned off the heating system, hoping it would stop the source of the carbon monoxide and buy Harley some time.

Back outside, the fire truck had arrived, but it was parked nowhere near the house, over at the townhouses, and the firemen were walking slowly across the yard to get to us. What if this had been an actual fire?! Jesus Fucking Christ, y’all need to stop using Mapquest!

Kim and I explained the situation and the three men went inside with their detectors. After a few tense minutes, we could hear from the garage that the alarm had stopped. I peeked at the house cameras on my phone to see they were messing with the smoke detector that’s hardwired into the house up on the second floor. So it’s not carbon monoxide after all. Phew!

Thankfully, no CO2 was detected in the home and it was safe to go in. It seems that it was just a fault in the ancient smoke detector that was built into the house, its deafening volume making it impossible to tell where the noise was coming from. They said that they get calls like this all the time, where even they can’t always tell which detector is making the racket.

The fire department was very helpful, cutting the alarm out (the only way to silence it) and capping off the ends of the electrical wires. They even installed a new, battery operated alarm directly over the junction box, completely obscuring it, so that we could “pretend this never even happened.” While they worked on that, I investigated our home cameras’ history, discovering that the alarm had been going off for over three hours. Had this really been a carbon monoxide leak, then we would have come home to a much grimmer scene. Note to self – we need something that will alert us to an issue immediately so that we can call the authorities to help our pets if we’re not home!

Oh, and the firemen did explain that they intentionally parked where they did. They could see the home wasn’t smoking (they can literally see our house from their station) and they knew they’d get here quicker by going in a straight line instead of taking the several circuitous side roads it normally takes to get to us. I said something about hoping that they’d take the road if it was a fire. Fascinatingly, they told me that they’d actually be able to hit the house better with the hoses from over in the townhouse parking lot. So, at least now that’s one less anxiety that I have, knowing that the fire department has already worked out the best place to park in case of emergency. So, hopefully this will invoke Murphy’s Law – they’re ready and know where to park, so I’m never going to need it. Right? Right?!

It took the rest of the night for me to feel like I was no longer wired from the adrenaline. Kim settled down too, getting over the panic of the situation (which is what we think was making her feel like she was having a hard time breathing. Panic attacks are no joke!) The cats got over their ordeal pretty quickly. (Quinn had been yowling when Kim arrived home and was then doubly traumatized by being shoved into Kim’s car. Harley had just been hanging out in the basement as far away from the noise as felinely possible.) Within an hour, they were both happily sitting in our laps.

However, Brienne didn’t want to leave our sides all night, which isn’t normal because she loves to sleep in our bed anytime we’re not in it. She’s also acting like she’s scared of the upstairs. But, really, can you blame her? The poor thing was sleeping in our bed when the alarm started screaming. It was really loud to me, and I was down on the first floor with my regular human ears. She was right up there with it when it went off, and then had to listen to it going off for all that time. Poor thing!

Anyway, I’m very grateful that it was a false alarm, but honestly, I could have done without that kind of excitement today!

Oh, and please take this as a reminder to check your smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors. Be safe everyone!